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Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Aerial photograph of Soviet freighter SS Fizik Kurchatov carrying six missiles away from Cuba back to the USSR on 7 November 1962, following the de-escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Soviet construction of nuclear missile sites in Cuba led US President John F. Kennedy to order a naval blockade of the island. The following stand-off brought the world to the brink of nuclear warfare. The crisis ended on 28 October 1962, when Soviet Premier Khrushchev announced that the Cuban sites would be dismantled.